Just like the rest of the SEO/inbound/internet marketing world, we have spent the last year learning how to shift from link building to link earning, and despite the fact that this stuff is really, really hard, we’ve found some success by building out processes. One challenge (advantage?) that we have is that we work exclusively on Spanish-language projects. This means that while many of the strategies are the same, some of the tactics vary. This post is primarily meant for marketers interested in targeting the Spanish-speaking world, but should also be helpful to full-stack marketers no matter the language.

Are you ready for Spanish content marketing?

There are a ton of great reasons to get started on Spanish-language content marketing. The Hispanic community in the US grew 67% from 2000 to 2011 according to Pew Hispanic, and cleared 50 million people for the first time (although reaching them does not necessarily mean you need to start marketing in Spanish). Also, while growth has slowed in Latin American countries over the past couple of years, their economies are stable enough that they aren’t as affected by downturns in the US economy as they once were. Just because Hispanic marketing is hot, though, is not a good reason for your business to invest time, money, and sweat equity in marketing to Spanish speakers. You need to validate the concept and ensure it's the right move for you.

First, translate your main keywords. In some cases this can be fairly straightforward, but there are some products that shouldn't be translated, since the term exists on its own. A great example is “e-commerce:" While there are ways to translate this term, most of the time we leave it in English. But please, a word of advice: Don’t use a machine translation. Get a human being to translate your terms for you, then have someone else check their translations. It is of paramount importance that your terms preserve the same query intent, otherwise, any work on keyword research will be wasted.

The research phase

We believe in doing persona-based marketing at all times. There is no reason to belabor the point of how to build personas, since this topic has been written about extensively. Suffice it to say, we follow the process explained by Mike King almost to a T. The main difference in our technique is that in addition to this process, we have to think about the country/region towards which we will be targeting the content. This informs the type of data we should use for a given piece of content. For example, if you are going after US-based Hispanics, you may not even need to create the content in Spanish!

Armed with these personas, we find actual people who are active on social media and see what type of content they are sharing. Followerwonk is a great way to do this. These are not necessarily prospects, but It’s absolutely necessary to drill down as much as possible, otherwise your outreach will not be nearly as effective.

Arm yourself with information

If you are going to create interesting content for Latin American audiences, you are going to need data. Lots of it. Luckily for you, we’ve gathered a ton of data resources from all over Latin America. Some of them are country specific, but others look at the region as a whole. The information is in Spanish, but as we say in Mexico, "gajes del oficio" (comes with the territory). At least we’ve translated the description of the databases so you’ll be able to find what you are looking for. It is also a living document. As we find more data sets, they will be added (and if you have any suggestions, please put them in the comments, either here or on that post).

Since you already have your personas built, you can easily decide the data that makes the most sense for your project, and then move on to another important step:

Building the content

If you are a data driven marketer (the best kind in my opinion), when you are diving into the data, your aim has to be to understand the story that the data is telling you, and how you can use it to promote your client. Once you have the story in place, we start thinking about how to best present the data. In some many cases, a great blog post will do the trick. In those cases, we have one person start writing titles. We write a minimum of five, because we want to stimulate creative thought—it is rare that the first idea is the best.

Our lead editor reviews the proposals with the author, and together they decide which best fits the subject, as well as the websites/people the post will be targeting. Then the post is written, reviewed by the editor, and then another content creator to ensure that the piece is focused, creative, and grammatically sound.

In many cases, users will respond more favorably to a visualization than to text. This is especially true if you are explaining a process or giving instructions. We’ve found that video can be an awesome way get through to these people. If you don’t have the budget or the ability to shoot a video yourself (although you should—as Phil Nottingham explained at MozCon, good video can be created pretty cheaply), PowToon allows you to create an animated explanation video, even if you don’t have incredible design chops.

If you must create an infographic, at least try to be original in how you present it. We’ve used Piktochart and Visual.ly just like everyone else, but there are a ton of other ways to present data. We’ve created a list of data visualization resources that includes some very unusual ways of presenting data. In many cases, the main investment is in learning how to use the platform.

Shameless Plug: In my Mozinar next Tuesday I’ll be sharing the easiest way to build resources with outreach prospects built in. It’s seriously awesome. You should sign up now. ¡Por favor!

If you are really strapped for cash, all you need is a list of keywords for your vertical and Google’s advanced operators. We use these on occasion, but most of the time, it is faster and more efficient to lean on tools built by others.

Link Prospector supports multilingual queries, and if you want to get a great list of prospects quickly, this is a great way to find them. (Full disclosure: We helped build the multilingual tool, and while we didn’t profit from it, we do get to use it for free. Still, if you told me I could only use Moz and one other tool, this would be it).

Buzzstream is an awesome tool which also supports multilingual queries, and doubles as a way to remember what prospects are in what stage of a relationship. We have found that the contact information that the tool pulls is not particularly accurate for websites in Spanish, so if you are using this tool don’t depend on them—go get the information for yourself. Another platform that we’ve been using that has proven helpful is GroupHigh. Their platform is pricey, but the prospects that you can get from here are excellent, especially if you are doing a bilingual English/Spanish outreach campaign. The metrics they provide are based on Moz’s stats as well as social shares, but they don’t always coincide with what we find when we check sites by hand.

To be sure, we prequalify every single website we are going to do outreach to. And we craft every single pitch individually to ensure that they are more likely to looked upon favorably by our prospective partners.

Once we have our prospects, we separate them into tiers. The top tier is of the most important people and websites in a sphere. We know that getting in touch with and convincing these targets to share our content will be extraordinarily hard, simply because they are pitched to so often. The advantage we have is that most of the pitches they receive totally suck. Knowing how to approach each influencer can make or break your outreach efforts, which leads to our next point:

Outreach to influencers

The goal of any outreach campaign is to get the person/website you’ve targeted to share your content piece, right? In most cases, no matter the quality of your pitch, it will be ignored. This is because some websites are abandoned, the webmaster might be too busy with other work (like a day job), or they simply might not care enough to respond. These are the facts.

And then there is the question of culture and language. We’ve used templates developed by some of the best link builders in the US and seen zero or even negative response. So, it is crucial to localize not just the content, but also the approach. By following our process, you can increase your engagement rate when doing outreach, especially when it is for a piece of content you have created. Here are a few tips that we’ve found to be effective when doing outreach to Spanish-speaking webmasters, bloggers, and journalists:

1) Write it in Spanish

I know that this might seem obvious, but my friends who are bloggers—including for the oldest blog in Mexico—receive dozens of pitches from professional PR companies IN ENGLISH. Unforgivable.

2) Make it relevant

Even if the piece of content that you are promoting is only loosely related to the target site, make sure that you make an argument for why it would be interesting to the readership of that site. Yes, this means you can’t just blast emails. Too bad.

3) Keep it short

In Spanish, we have a tendency to be a bit verbose. In fact, we use more words to explain something than people usually do in English. That being said, it is still better to be concise.

4) Have a hook

Whenever you are doing outreach, the goal is to provide value to your client or company. Keep in mind, however, that webmasters don’t care about how great it will be for you if they share your latest infographic about dog food. They care about their readers and community, so make sure that your pitch addresses the benefits for them, not for you.

5) Address the webmaster how (s)he addresses users

In Spanish, you can address readers either formally or informally. By making your outreach consistent with how they address their readers, you can be sure that your pitch fits their style.

6) Be legit, be honest

Despite what I’ve heard about other markets, we’ve found that being TAGFEE is the best way to get results from an outreach campaign. That doesn’t mean that you can’t sugarcoat your outreach ("Links, Please" is probably not the best subject line), but we send emails from our own domain, and own up to working on behalf of a client. We even link back to our profile pages in our outreach emails.

7) Prioritize outreach method

The best method for outreach depends on who you are reaching out to. This is our priority list when reaching out to bloggers, for example:

Contact form

Facebook

Email

Twitter

In our experience, the first two methods are easily the most effective. This is another place where being open and honest works to our advantage. Since we are using our own Facebook profiles to conduct outreach, prospects can look at our pictures, read our updates, and see that we are human beings, just like them. They are far less likely to say no to someone who likes the same band as them, right?

Of course, if you are reaching out to a journalist (or even a web-based magazine) it is probably going to be best to reach out via phone. Having a prioritized list of methods makes things easier for the outreach specialist to work.

There is obviously a lot more that goes into outstanding Spanish content marketing, but this guide is here to give you the basics. If you want to dig deeper into our Spanish digital marketing processes, please sign up for my Mozinar. ¡Muchas Gracias!

If you would prefer to read this post in Spanish, check it out on the Altura Interactive blog.

When doing SEO for Hispanic markets it is important to take in account that Spanish is a language with meanings that can vary a lot in different Spanish-speaking countries. Translating a keyword into Spanish is not enough, you need to take in account the lingo used in each country to refer to your products or services. Believe me it can vary a lot. Just make a trip to Miami and you will realize that many times Spanish-speaking people coming from different countries don't understand each other while talking in Spanish. :). A word can have one meaning in one country and a complete different meaning in other.

This is why keyword research is becoming less and less important, and persona development is more important. You need to know the type of people who will be interested in the content you are creating.

Concerning language differences, the point is well taken, but I think we can agree that there are more commonalities than differences. If a video goes viral in Mexico, it can also be enjoyed by Cuban@s, Boricuas and Chilen@s. Mexicans watch Columbian telenovelas, and we all love El Gordo y la Flaca (at least at my house)! That is why we always focus on creating stuff that is inclusive, even if the focus is on a specific segment of the population.

:). Agree, there are many cultural things that we (I'm Hispanic too) share and enjoy. (even when I have to accept we don't like El Gordo y la Flaca at home. LOL). Thanks a lot for this post, I'm sure it will be very useful for those trying to reach our very special "subculture".

Nice post. I totally agree with this post. While writing the content we keep in mind the content must be relevant, knowledgeable and must be understandable. As we know content is a king. Quality content helps in gathering the attention of the people building the relationships and it also helps increasing the page rank. Great post thanks.

How to deal with different languages in social media? I suppose the best is to create a different twitter, Facebook... account for each language. But when you use your name what name use when you create the second language. I mean if in English you use @NameSecondname when you create an account for the Spanish market what name would be good?

Hi Narcis,
The main difference is between people and businesses. If you are a person and want to start tweeting in another language, then you should just do so! I'm bilingual and bi-cultural, and while the vast majority of my social media interaction is in English, I do tweet in Spanish as well.

For brands it is a little different. The main question is, are you going to want to do a new page for every country or every language? Once you've made that decision, it is pretty easy, you use the brand name and add the country/language prefix (mx for Mexico, es for Spanish). Whether or not you use an underscore or not is up to you.

Good article Zeph, glad to see you here in MOZ BLOG!
Great resources you are citing in your blog. There's one other resource I'd like you to check if possible for future references and citations, this self-served platform www.createanarticle.com to support small businesses and multicultural agencies like yours in their efforts with content marketing to Hispanics/Latinos, especially bilingual English/Spanish outreach campaigns in Mexico and US.
I'd love you to check it out and contact me privately if you can (you have my email), I'd love to know what you think and ways to improve it from your agency's perspective. All the best!

This content is very useful for those who want to improve the rankings of their Spanish content. I'm personally not writing content in Spanish but I know a lot of people who have learned it to publish articles in this language.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but if machine translation is all you can do, then you are not ready for multi-lingual, and you probably should just keep the content you have. This is because if you use Machine Translation, Google asks that you de-index all those pages as they are low quality content. And if you don't do it, trust me, they will do it for you.

Also, rolling out 12+ languages at the same time is probably not the best strategy. You should do one, find what works, and move on to the next. A project that complex can get away from you pretty fast. Unless you are working with a kickass agency (or a few), it is going to be impossible for you to deliver the quality of work that will be necessary for this project to be successful.

As far as keywords are concerned, again, you really ought to have a native speaker help you, context is so important and it changes from country to country (sometimes even within the same country). But the fact of the matter is that with (not provided) becoming the norm, we are recommending using persona development for marketing to replace keyword research where ever you can.

I'm touching on most of these subjects in my Mozinar next week, you should come hang out! And if you have follow-up questions, I'm glad to help however I can.

Great article, Zeph! Just a few questions. I am starting to do some International SEO for a few of my clients. What do you do if machine translation is the only way you can translate? Because I am doing 12+ languages and it is nearly impossible to have someone personally translate all the keywords in those keywords.

Also, is it a good idea to just straight translate your English keywords to the other languages?

I agree with Zeph on the straight translation into 12 languages. How will you handle your customer support and enquiries. If you concentrate on 1 or 2 language markets that you do speak, once you crack these, you will be in a stronger and wiser position to hire someone to market your product in other languages.

As far as keywords go, if you use Google keyword tool, it will suggest other keyword options for you based on a ball park estimate of search volume in the country/language you are targeting. I often market in English and Italian and find that key phrases are rarely a direct translation.

Google may call it duplicate if you translate your content using a machine. Watch this short video from Googlewebmasterhelp.

With regards to Spanish keywords, using a machine or not depends on your target country and market. I work for the Spanish Copywriter Group. One of our main services is English to Spanish translation of marketing materials. Unless it’s neutral Spanish, we include in our translation the most popular keyword for the target country.

For instance, the most popular Spanish keywords for the weight loss niche are: adelgazar, perder peso, bajar de peso. But in Spain they prefer “Adelgazar”.

Recently, we translated a website about computers targeting the Argentinian market. People in Argentina prefer using “disco rigido” instead of “disco duro” (i.e. hard drive), and “notebook” instead of “portatil” (i.e. portable computer or laptop).

However, we may still use machines for the initial translation. Then we edit and proofread material.

Hy! It's a very interesting post. Many thinks from here can be used for any other language. And these days, when content becomes more an more important, these kind of posts can be very helpful. I look forward to read any other interesting thinks about this subject.